Male Swallowtails "Puddling"~

Set 3 in a Series of 3~

As I said at the beginning of this series, I had not witnessed this behavior for such a long period before.  I have seen butterflies taking in nutrients from the mud of a creek bed, yet this pair of beauties stayed around for a few hours, leaving only briefly to sun themselves and then return.  Some male butterflies, especially Swallowtails  take on this behavior which is termed “puddling.” They are attracted to salts and amino acids in the mud.  It is thought that the males benefit from the salts, increasing their reproductive success – but of course it is not known for sure and scientist are still trying to work out the reason. They even took of nutrition from a little pile of bird droppings that had been dropped in the bed, hope it was sweet~